Jesus and Fox News

Some excerpts:

Fox News loves little baby Jesus--eternally preserved in swaddling clothes, radiant, helpless, voiceless, surrounded by wise men with gifts, angels in perfect harmony, shepherds with faces of wonderment.

Yes, little baby Jesus, the miracle child, the controlled child, is what Fox News loves. [ ]

What a lot of American Christians and apparently Fox News want is the Christmas Jesus, who makes no moral claim on corporate American and consumer choices.

When Baptist pastor Joe Phelps said Jesus offers a moral challenge at Christmas to the market practices of Wal-Mart, Fox News host Neil Cavuto rejected that concept.

"I think it's a little disingenuous on your part--no harm or slight intended--to bring Jesus into the mix to make your point," Cavuto said.

"Why is that inappropriate?" Phelps asked.

Cavuto replied, "[E]ven to mix him [Jesus] in to the business and commerce of this country, under the guise of religion, pastor I think that is at best phony."

Why is it that Cavuto and conservative American Christians do not want "to mix" what Jesus said and did in with the marketplace?

The simple answer is that they don't want to hear Jesus' moral challenge to the prevailing marketplace ideology, which says that the rich should get richer at the expense of others, that the pursuit of profit at the expense of the poor is just the way it is.

Jesus rejects economic Darwinianism and refuses to accept challenges from the rival god of materialism. He warns about the dangers of split loyalties between God and greed. He offers the Golden Rule. He prioritizes care for the poor. He criticizes the religious elite who are concerned only about rituals and neglect justice.